Welcome to planMP

From planMP

PlanMP is a community effort by the MKM (Mathematical Knowledge Management) community to collect and analyse mathematical practices as well as raise awareness among designers of mathematical software of what these needs actually are. In terms of HCI (Human Computer Interaction) we are trying to collect data for a requirements analysis for the creation of a mathematical persona, i.e., a [persona] representing a professional mathematician.

The famous blackboard for example allows for many a mathematician's practices like developing thoughts by visualization, communicating partial thoughts, or redefining properties of objects on the fly and in parallel. In contrast, an editor like emacs with create, update or delete interactions separates e.g. the communication from the overview effect (due to screen size, fixed work spaces, number of computers used, etc.). In particular, no editor can replace the blackboard in principle. Therefore --- before we start creating yet another computer environment to support mathematical work --- we ask what specifically are the mathematical practices we want to support? Here we understand mathematical practices (MP) to be the actions taken by any professional while 'doing mathematics'.

planMP needs your contributions!

Please create an account and

• Write down mathematical practices you observed (for categories see the navigation pane on the left).
• Comment on the observations of others in the discussion panes of the pages.
• Propose how the practices can influence the design of existing and envisioned mathematical software systems.

Even though mathematical support (in form e.g. of CAS systems like Maple or Mathematica or editors like emacs) is offered more and more, there still is a fundamental mistrust to what the computer can really offer on a big scale. A typical experience of surprise is documented by Edward Scheinerman in the introduction to his book "C++ for Mathematicians":

     I was working with two colleagues on a problem in discrete mathematics. We knew that we
     could complete one portion of the proof if we could find a graph with certain specific properties.
     We carefully wrote down these criteria on a blackboard and set out to find the elusive graph. 
     Although we tried to create the required graph by hand, each example we tried took us several 
     minutes to check. We realized that the criteria could be checked mechanically and so we wrote a 
     program to generate graphs at random until one with the needed properties was found. The first 
     time we ran the program, it asked us for the number of vertices. Because we were unsuccessful 
     with small examples, we typed in 50. Nearly instantly we were rewarded when the computer printed 
     out a  few screenfuls of data specifying the graph. Heartened by this (but not wanting to tangle
     with such a large graph), we ran the program again asking for a graph with only 20 vertices. 
     Again, we were greeted with near instant success. We started to draw the graph on the blackboard,
     but it was a nasty random mess (no surprise --- our program was designed to examine random graphs
     one after another). One more run. Shall we be optimistic? Certain this would not work, we ran the
     program again for graphs on 5 vertices. Success! The graph was actually quite simple and we had a
     good  laugh over how we found our answer.